South-east Queensland and Northern NSW Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Monday 2nd November)

Best Days: Most days should have fun waves, if you can work around the winds. 

Recap: Strengthening northerly winds generated punchy local windswells on Saturday, on top of a small residual E’ly groundswell, which persisted into Sunday along with rapidly easing windswell and light offshore winds (peaky 2ft+ sets for early surfers, smaller later). Today has seen strong southerly winds push up the coast, and generate building wind waves for the region that are now pushing 4-6ft across south facing beaches in Northern NSW, and 2-3ft across the outer Gold Coast points (bigger but wind affected at exposed spots north of the border, a little smaller on the Sunny Coast).

Alley drop-in by a windsurfer!

Choppy though sizeable windwell in Coffs this arvo

Small Monday arvo peelers at Greeny

This week (Nov 3 - 6)

There’s a whole stack of surf on the way this week.

Today’s fresh southerly winds will continue across most regions into Tuesday. There’s an outside chance for pockets of SW breezes in the morning, but with the synoptic flow remaining from the south overnight at strength, anywhere exposed will be quite wobbly.

The trough responsible for the change is now parked in the central Tasman Sea, and the models have slowed its easing phase, allowing it to maintain strength into Tuesday before abating more rapidly into Wednesday (see below). This will generate strong S/SE tending SE swells into Tuesday and Wednesday before surf size slowly abates into Thursday.

Tuesday’s fresh S’ly winds will be accompanied with 4-6ft surf across Northern NSW’s south facing beaches, with smaller surf elsewhere. Expect a gradual strengthening of the swell as the day wears on.

Throughout SE Qld, the initial low period and southerly component in the swell direction will limit size across the outer points to 2-3ft though a slight bolstering is expected later in the day and into Wednesday, thanks to a nice intensification of the fetch sometime tonight and into Tuesday morning. Exposed northern ends and south swell magnets should pick up larger waves in the 3-4ft+ range but they’ll be heavily wind affected Tuesday. If anything expect slightly smaller surf on the Sunny Coast throughout this event.

Wednesday will provide great conditions everywhere with light winds and sea breezes. A lingering S’ly breeze is possible across the Sunny Coast but elsewhere should be smooth. As for size, 5-6ft sets are likely across Northern NSW’s south swell magnets, with smaller waves elsewhere but it’ll be really nice along the points as the wavelength draws out. SE Qld should nudge slightly higher than Tuesday and there’ll be options just about everywhere.  

A complex trough will move up the coast on Thursday, bringing with it a risk of northerly winds ahead of a late S’ly change on the Mid North Coast (in fact, we could see afternoon winds swing offshore elsewhere, depending on how the trough behaves). Wednesday’s size will be rapidly easing though Northern NSW should still have decent sets in the 4ft range to begin with. It’ll be much smaller north of the border but the beaches should be pretty good.

At this stage Friday’s looking to see fresh southerly winds in the wake of the trough. A moderate southerly windswell may develop across Northern NSW in the lee of the change and model guidance has a small cut-off low well east of the Mid North Coast early Friday that may provide a slightly more robust pulse of S/SE swell late arvo, but we’ll actually have a decent E/NE swell in the water at this time too.

It'll originate from the eastern flank of the central Tasman trough - responsible for this week’s SE swells Tues and Wed - which will have pushed against a high pressure ridge to the east of New Zealand, strengthening E/NE thru’ NE winds across a broad region generally north of New Zealand.

This process will get underway on Tuesday but it won’t be until Wednesday that we see the fetch develop properly (see below). It’ll strengthen quite a bit into Thursday though by this stage will be travelling rapidly towards New Zealand, eventually falling behind its swell shadow.

Nevertheless, the early stages of E/NE swell should reach our coast by Friday and we should see inconsistent 3-4ft sets from this source by the afternoon - though it’ll favour Northern NSW more so than SE Qld, so surf size may be a little smaller north of the border. However, with southerly winds on offer there’ll be nice - though very infrequent - sets across most outer points. 

This weekend (Nov 7 - 8)

We’ve got a tricky weekend of waves ahead. 

There won’t be any shortage of swell, with lingering S/SE and E/NE swell from Friday maintaining size into Saturday, easing Sunday (roughly speaking, 3-4ft south of the border, 2-3ft north).

However, coastal troughiness centered around two regions - one slow moving off the central Qld coast, and another off Southern NSW - is expected to freshen onshore winds at some point. 

At this stage, SE Qld is at risk of the least favourable conditions, as much of the Northern NSW coast should see light winds for most of Saturday. Of course, the central Qld trough also has the potential to kick up a local swell for Sunday so this could be a blessing in disguise for some SE Qld locations. 

However, it’s still quite some time away and the models are looking pretty volatile right now so we need a few more days to iron things out. If you have to pencil in a day I’d aim for Saturday south of the border, and Sunday north of the border. 

Let’s fine tune things on Wednesday. 

Next week (Nov 9 onwards)

Long term suggests persistent activity in the Tasman Sea, with a mix of mid-range S/SE E’ly swells keeping most beaches quite active. More on this on Wednesday.